Friday, March 25, 2011

Mushrooms and Spinach in Wine Sauce

Whenever I buy mushrooms to use in a dish, I always end up with a large amount of leftover mushrooms that end up going bad. I hate that! I paid for those darn mushrooms, and it’s so sad whenever I find them old and wrinkly in my fridge. I made this dish lightly inspired by Pioneer Woman’s Burgundy Mushrooms to solve my most recent leftover mushroom issue. I’ve now fallen in love with these mushrooms and will be making this with every leftover mushroom from now on! Seriously.

For the recipe I used Red Truck, which is a red blend. I really like this wine! I bought it because it was on sale, but I’m definitely buying it again sometime.

The other ingredients are one package of whole mushrooms or whatever is leftover, 3/4 bag of baby spinach, butter, 1/4 onion, and whatever spices you want.

First I sautéed 1/4 onion in butter for about 7 minutes until they got transparent. Then I added a pinch of curry, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

I added the mushrooms plus a couple splashes of water to help them cook.

The next obvious step was to pour myself a glass of wine, since all civilized people drink wine at 9AM on a Wednesday.

I cooked the mushrooms until they were very brown and the liquid was mostly cooked off.

Next was the wine. I started off by adding about 1/4 cup, waiting until it cooked down, and adding more.

I did this a few times until the mushrooms looked completely soaked in wine, and the wine was reduced to a syrupy sauce.

I then filled the pan with spinach. This was about 3/4 of a bag. I added a couple more splashes of wine to help the spinach wilt. Did I mention my kitchen smelled absolutely amazing at this point? Well, it did.

I let the mushrooms and spinach simmer with the wine until it was once again reduced.

The perfect bite! It was really good at this point, but I let it sit covered for a few hours hoping more magic would occur.

It worked! After a few more hours, the mushrooms turned a beautiful deep purple, and the spinach was completely drenched in wine and butter. Mmmm wine and butter. Perfect. I turned the heat back on, added a splash more wine and some more red pepper flakes. The red pepper flakes gave it a wonderful amount of heat that just seemed to go great with the flavor of the wine. The piece of bread was definitely necessary to soak up the rest of the sauce.

Delicious. I can’t wait to make this again. This would be perfect as a side dish or on pasta, or just eat the whole thing by yourself like I did :)

Dice onion and saute in butter for 5-7 minutes or until transparent. Add spices.Add mushrooms and cook for 10 minutes on low or med-low. Add 4 Tbsp water.Add a little more butter too - why not?Turn up heat to medium until liquid is goneTurn down heat to low and add 1/2 cup wine. Cook on low or med-low until wine looks like syrup. Continue to add wine and reduce.Add spinach and let sit for a few seconds. Add more wine to help it wilt.Stir around until spinach is wilted.

Let sit covered for a few hours if desired. Turn up heat again and add more wine. Then eat!